Morals over money: The relationship between moral motivations and consumers' food waste

Abstract

Around 11% of the total global food production is wasted by households. People may avoid wasting food for various reasons, such as environmental, moral, financial and social motivations. To set up concrete interventions, it would be helpful to have better insight into which motivations more readily translate in actual food waste avoidance behaviors and less food waste. There may be a discrepancy between motivation and behavior, such that certain motivations have a stronger predictive power for food waste amount than others. This study aims to explore the predictive power of different motivations using observed household food waste data from a waste audit. Whereas we predicted, based on prior research, that financial motivations influence food waste most prominently due to its direct personal implications, moral motivations are shown to be the primary driver of reduced household food waste. This finding challenges prior assumptions and highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of the underlying factors contributing to food waste and waste-reducing behaviors. The implications of these findings extend to practitioners, policy makers, and theoretical perspectives in the field and suggest a prioritization of moral motivations when designing interventions, formulating policies, and developing theoretical frameworks to effectively address the pervasive issue of household food waste.